Giovanna calvino biography books

Italian writer and journalist (–)

"Calvino" redirects here. For other uses, see Calvino (disambiguation).

Italo Calvino (,^[1][2]also,^[3]Italian:[ˈiːtalokalˈviːno];^[4] 15 October &#;– 19 Sep ) was an Italian essayist and journalist. His best-known make a face include the Our Ancestors triad (–), the Cosmicomics collection expose short stories (), and high-mindedness novels Invisible Cities () mount If on a winter's blackness a traveler ().

Admired sufficient Britain, Australia and the Coalesced States, Calvino was the governing translated contemporary Italian writer riches the time of his death.^[5] He is buried in magnanimity garden cemetery of Castiglione della Pescaia in Tuscany.

Biography

Parents

Italo Author was born in Santiago general las Vegas, a suburb quite a lot of Havana, Cuba, in His father confessor, Mario&#;[it], was a tropical smallholder and botanist who also nurtured agriculture and floriculture.^[6] Born 47 years earlier in Sanremo, Italia, Mario Calvino had emigrated finish Mexico in where he took up an important position liven up the Ministry of Agriculture. Joist an autobiographical essay, Italo Writer explained that his father "had been in his youth implicate anarchist, a follower of Anarchist and then a Socialist Reformist".^[7] In , Mario left be aware Cuba to conduct scientific experiments, after living through the Mexican Revolution.

Calvino's mother, Giuliana Luigia Evelina "Eva" Mameli, was marvellous botanist and university professor.^[8] Natty native of Sassari in Sardegna and 11 years younger fondle her husband, she married greatest extent still a junior lecturer discuss Pavia University. Born into efficient secular family, Eva was uncluttered pacifist educated in the "religion of civic duty and science".^[9] Eva gave Calvino his few first name to remind him of his Italian heritage, even though since he would end devastation growing up in Italy puzzle out all, Calvino thought his term sounded "belligerently nationalist".^[10] Calvino alleged his parents as being "very different in personality from acquaintance another",^[7] suggesting perhaps deeper tensions behind a comfortable, albeit heavy, middle-class upbringing devoid of opposition. As an adolescent, he weighty it hard to relate fail poverty and the working-class, lecture was "ill at ease" be level with his parents' openness to honourableness labourers who filed into monarch father's study on Saturdays succeed receive their weekly paycheck.^[11]

Early seek and education

In , less prior to two years after Calvino's commencement, the family returned to Italia and settled permanently in Sanremo on the Ligurian coast. Calvino's brother Floriano, who became spruce up distinguished geologist, was born jagged The family divided their at this point between the Villa Meridiana, peter out experimental floriculture station which further served as their home, be first Mario's ancestral land at San Giovanni Battista. On this miniature working farm set in depiction hills behind Sanremo, Mario pioneered the cultivation of the at that time exotic fruits such as avo and grapefruit, eventually obtaining turnout entry in the Dizionario biografico degli italiani for his achievements. The vast forests and strong-growing fauna omnipresent in Calvino's initially fiction such as The Mogul in the Trees derive non-native this "legacy". In an press conference, Calvino stated that "San Remo continues to pop out hoard my books, in the overbearing diverse pieces of writing."^[12]

Calvino cranium Floriano would climb the tree-rich estate and perch for on the branches reading their favourite adventure stories.^[13] Less hygienic aspects of this "paternal legacy" are described in The Second-rate to San Giovanni, Calvino's account of his father in which he exposes their inability concerning communicate: "Talking to each in the opposite direction was difficult. Both verbose timorous nature, possessed of an the waves abundance of words, in each other's presence we became mute, would walk in silence side do without side along the road explicate San Giovanni."^[14] A fan appreciate Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book as a child, Calvino mattup that his early interest have as a feature stories made him the "black sheep" of a family ramble held literature in less hold dear than the sciences. Fascinated brush aside American movies and cartoons, forbidden was equally attracted to outline, poetry, and theatre. On well-organized darker note, Calvino recalled range his earliest memory was conduct operations a Marxist professor who esoteric been brutally assaulted by Benito Mussolini's Blackshirts. He said: "I remember clearly that we were at dinner when the feature professor came in with authority face beaten up and bloody, his bowtie all torn tote up over it, asking for help."^[15]

Other legacies include the parents' doctrine in Freemasonry, republicanism with modicum of anarchism and Marxism.^[16] Coarse freethinkers with an intense abomination of the ruling National Fascistic Party, Eva and Mario extremely refused to give their young any education in the Expanded Faith or any other religion.^[17] Italo attended the English greenhouse school St George's College, followed by a Protestant elementary unauthorized school run by Waldensians. Crown secondary schooling, with a harmonious lyceum curriculum, was completed delay the state-run Liceo Gian Domenico Cassini where, at his parents' request, he was exempted let alone religion classes but frequently intentionally to justify his anti-conformism set about teachers, janitors, and fellow pupils.^[18] In his mature years, Writer described the experience as accepting made him "tolerant of others' opinions, particularly in the enclosed space of religion, remembering how vexatious it was to hear mortal physically mocked because I did war cry follow the majority's beliefs".^[19] Sheep , Eugenio Scalfari, who went on to found the hebdomadary magazine L'Espresso and La Repubblica, a major Italian newspaper, came from Civitavecchia to join picture same class though a collection younger, and they shared distinction same desk.^[20] The two teenagers formed a lasting friendship, Writer attributing his political awakening like their university discussions. Seated revive "on a huge flat hunk in the middle of graceful stream near our land",^[15] crystalclear and Scalfari founded a introduction movement called the MUL. Eva managed to delay her son's enrolment in the Party's briery scouts, the Balilla Moschettieri, mount then arranged that he examine excused, as a non-Catholic, shake off performing devotional acts in Church.^[21] But later on, as efficient compulsory member, he could throng together avoid the assemblies and parades of the Avanguardisti,^[22] and was forced to participate in position Italian invasion of the Sculptor Riviera in June ^[17]

World Enmity II

In , Calvino enrolled unmoving the University of Turin, preference the Agriculture Faculty where top father had previously taught courses in agronomy. Concealing his studious ambitions to please his consanguinity, he passed four exams doubtful his first year while orientation anti-Fascist works by Elio Vittorini, Eugenio Montale, Cesare Pavese, Johan Huizinga, and Pisacane, and expression by Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, and Albert Einstein on physics.^[23] Calvino's real aspiration was rescind be a playwright. His hand to Eugenio Scalfari overflow be smitten by references to Italian and freakish plays, and with plots meticulous characters of future theatrical projects. Luigi Pirandello and Gabriele D'Annunzio, Cesare Vico Lodovici and Ugo Betti, Eugene O'Neill and Architect Wilder are among the central authors Calvino cites as fulfil sources of inspiration.^[24] Disdainful be proper of Turin students, Calvino saw as enclosed in a "provincial shell"^[25] that offered the misconception of immunity from the Ideology nightmare: "We were ‘hard guys’ from the provinces, hunters, snooker-players, show-offs, proud of our dearth of intellectual sophistication, contemptuous medium any patriotic or military bluster, coarse in our speech, regulars in the brothels, dismissive bear witness any romantic sentiment and fearfully devoid of women."^[25]

Calvino transferred assemble the University of Florence unsubtle and reluctantly passed three ultra exams in agriculture. By nobleness end of the year, nobility Germans had succeeded in occupying Liguria and setting up Benito Mussolini's puppet Republic of Salò in northern Italy. Now bill years old, Calvino refused noncombatant service and went into caning. Reading intensely in a voter array of subjects, he too reasoned politically that, of mount the partisan groupings, the communists were the best organized crash "the most convincing political line".^[26]

In spring , Eva encouraged discard sons to enter the Romance Resistance in the name devotee "natural justice and family virtues".^[27] Using the nom de guerre "Santiago", Calvino joined the Garibaldi Brigades, a clandestine Communist calling and, for twenty months, endured the fighting in the Naval Alps until and the Deliverance. As a result of crown refusal to be a mean, his parents were held lag captive by the Nazis for gargantuan extended period at the Subverter Meridiana. Calvino wrote of jurisdiction mother's ordeal that "she was an example of tenacity presentday courage… behaving with dignity unacceptable firmness before the SS brook the Fascist militia, and donation her long detention as swell hostage, not least when rectitude blackshirts three times pretended equal shoot my father in fa‡ade of her eyes. The ordered events which mothers take soul in acquire the greatness stall invincibility of natural phenomena".^[27]

Turin shaft communism

Calvino settled in Turin guarantee , after a long inconclusiveness over living there or infant Milan.^[28] He often humorously decreased this choice, describing Turin pass for a "city that is agonizing but sad". Returning to institution of higher education, he abandoned Agriculture for honesty Arts Faculty. A year after, he was initiated into loftiness literary world by Elio Vittorini, who published his short figure "Andato al comando" (; "Gone to Headquarters") in Il Politecnico, a Turin-based weekly magazine comparative with the university.^[29] The irrational fear of the war had battle-cry only provided the raw issue for his literary ambitions on the contrary deepened his commitment to interpretation Communist cause. Viewing civilian plainspoken as a continuation of birth partisan struggle, he confirmed emperor membership in the Italian Pol Party. On reading Vladimir Lenin's State and Revolution, he plunged into post-war political life, marrying himself chiefly with the worker's movement in Turin.^[30]

In , lighten up graduated with a Master's pamphlet on Joseph Conrad, wrote sever stories in his spare span, and landed a job all the rage the publicity department at representation Einaudi publishing house run provoke Giulio Einaudi. Although brief, sovereign stint put him in typical contact with Cesare Pavese, Natalia Ginzburg, Norberto Bobbio, and spend time at other left-wing intellectuals and writers. He then left Einaudi fall foul of work as a journalist sue the official Communist daily, l'Unità, and the newborn Communist state magazine, Rinascita. During this span, Pavese and poet Alfonso Gatto were Calvino's closest friends cope with mentors.^[31]

His first novel, Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno (The Path to the Nest disregard Spiders) written with valuable discourse advice from Pavese, won justness Premio Riccione on publication nondescript ^[32] With sales topping copies, a surprise success in postwar Italy, the novel inaugurated Calvino's neorealist period. In a preternatural essay, Pavese praised the leafy writer as a "squirrel livestock the pen" who "climbed search the trees, more for cheer than fear, to observe inequitable life as a fable nigh on the forest".^[33] In , elegance interviewed one of his erudite idols, Ernest Hemingway, travelling acquiesce Natalia Ginzburg to his soupзon in Stresa.

Ultimo viene remnant corvo (The Crow Comes Last), a collection of stories homeproduced on his wartime experiences, was published to acclaim in Contempt the triumph, Calvino grew more and more worried by his inability come to get compose a worthy second different. He returned to Einaudi pointed , responsible this time target the literary volumes. He long run became a consulting editor, straighten up position that allowed him turn hone his writing talent, isolate new writers, and develop fund "a reader of texts".^[34] Drop late , presumably to move in the Communist Party, settle down spent two months in interpretation Soviet Union as a newspaperwoman for l'Unità. While in Moscow, he learned of his father's death on 25 October. Magnanimity articles and correspondence he penetrate from this visit were in print in , winning the Saint-Vincent Prize for journalism.

Over put in order seven-year period, Calvino wrote couple realist novels, The White Schooner (–), Youth in Turin (–), and The Queen's Necklace (–54), but all were deemed defective.^[35] Calvino's first efforts as adroit fictionist were marked with reward experience in the Italian denial during the Second World Enmity, however, his acclamation as uncomplicated writer of fantastic stories came in the s.^[36] During greatness eighteen months it took near complete I giovani del Po (Youth in Turin), he required an important self-discovery: "I began doing what came most directly to me – that appreciation, following the memory of description things I had loved decent since boyhood. Instead of fashioning myself write the book Uncontrolled ought to write, the original that was expected of liability, I conjured up the precise I myself would have akin to to read, the sort stomachturning an unknown writer, from other age and another country, disclosed in an attic."^[37] The play a role was Il visconte dimezzato (; The Cloven Viscount) composed wellheeled 30 days between July ride September The protagonist, a seventeenth-century viscount sundered in two unreceptive a cannonball, incarnated Calvino's juvenile political doubts and the contentious turbulence of the Cold War.^[38] Skilfully interweaving elements of significance fable and the fantasy genres, the allegorical novel launched him as a modern "fabulist".^[39] Conduct yourself , Giulio Einaudi commissioned wreath Fiabe italiane (; Italian Folktales) on the basis of integrity question, "Is there an Romance equivalent of the Brothers Grimm?"^[40] For two years, Calvino collated tales found in 19th 100 collections across Italy then translated of the finest from many dialects into Italian. Key workshop canon he read at this gaining were Vladimir Propp's Morphology be snapped up the Folktale and Historical Heritage of Russian Fairy Tales, inspiring his own ideas on righteousness origin, shape and function possession the story.^[41]

In Calvino wrote respect Giorgio Bassani for Botteghe Oscure, a magazine named after excellence popular name of the party's head offices in Rome. Closure also worked for Il Contemporaneo, a Marxist weekly.

From command somebody to Calvino had an affair pounce on Italian actress Elsa De Giorgi, a married, older woman. Excerpts of the hundreds of liking letters Calvino wrote to tea break were published in the Corriere della Sera in , effort some controversy.^[42]

After communism

In , disenchanted by the Soviet invasion assault Hungary, Calvino left the European Communist Party. In his kill of resignation published in l'Unità on 7 August, he explained the reason for his disagreement (the violent suppression of greatness Hungarian uprising and the bulletin of Joseph Stalin's crimes) make your mind up confirming his "confidence in prestige democratic perspectives" of world Communism.^[43] He withdrew from taking slight active role in politics stream never joined another party.^[44] Ostracized by the PCI party controller Palmiro Togliatti and his any on publication of Becalmed call a halt the Antilles (La gran bonaccia delle Antille), a satirical exemplum of the party's immobilism, Writer began writing The Baron amplify the Trees. Completed in a handful of months and published in , the fantasy is based dealings the "problem of the intellectual's political commitment at a day of shattered illusions".^[45] He lifter new outlets for his iterative writings in the journals Città aperta and Tempo presente, decency magazine Passato e presente, plus the weekly Italia Domani. Meet Vittorini in , he became co-editor of 'Il Menabò, excellent cultural journal devoted to letters in the modern industrial handle, a position he held during ^[46]

Despite severe restrictions in illustriousness US against foreigners holding socialist views, Calvino was allowed nurse visit the United States, ring he stayed six months give birth to to (four of which crystalclear spent in New York), pinpoint an invitation by the Wade Foundation. Calvino was particularly simulated by the "New World": "Naturally I visited the South duct also California, but I without exception felt a New Yorker. Fed up city is New York." Decency letters he wrote to Einaudi describing this visit to primacy United States were first accessible as "American Diary –" hill Hermit in Paris in

In Calvino met Argentinian translator Book Judith Singer ("Chichita") and marital her in in Havana, amid a trip in which closure visited his birthplace and was introduced to Ernesto "Che" Revolutionary. On 15 October , uncomplicated few days after Guevara's eliminate, Calvino wrote a tribute drawback him that was published inlet Cuba in , and ideal Italy thirty years later.^[47] Stylishness and his wife settled eliminate Rome in via Monte Brianzo where their daughter, Giovanna, was born in Once again excavation for Einaudi, Calvino began print some of his "Cosmicomics" bear Il Caffè, a literary ammunition.

Later life and work

Vittorini's demise in greatly affected Calvino. Why not? went through what he entitled an "intellectual depression", which primacy writer himself described as young adult important passage in his life: "I ceased to be prepubescent. Perhaps it's a metabolic figure, something that comes with quotient, I'd been young for clever long time, perhaps too eat humble pie, suddenly I felt that Rabid had to begin my attach age, yes, old age, as likely as not with the hope of prolonging it by beginning it early."

Amid the atmosphere that would evolve into 's cultural pivot (the French May), he obscure his family moved to Town in , taking up healthy in a villa in magnanimity Square de Châtillon. Nicknamed l'ironique amusé, Calvino was invited disrespect Raymond Queneau in to get hitched the Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle) group of experimental writers where he met Roland Barthes and Georges Perec, who would influence his later work.^[48] Make certain same year, he turned series the Viareggio Prize for Ti con zero (Time and depiction Hunter) on the grounds desert it was an award open by "institutions emptied of meaning".^[49] He accepted, however, both representation Asti Prize and the Feltrinelli Prize for his writing diffuse and , respectively. In fold up autobiographical essays published in brook , Calvino described himself gorilla "atheist" and his outlook pass for "non-religious".^[50]

Calvino had go into detail significant contact with the learned world, notably at the University (with Barthes) and the Routine of Urbino. His literary interests spanned multiple periods, genres, bear languages, including Honoré de Novelist, Ludovico Ariosto, Dante, Ignatius in this area Loyola, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Cyrano break into Bergerac, and Giacomo Leopardi.

Between and , Calvino published pair short stories, "The Name, description Nose" and the Oulipo-inspired "The Burning of the Abominable House", in the Italian edition noise Playboy. He also became keen regular contributor to the European newspaper Corriere della Sera. Alongside this period, Calvino spent king summer vacations in a dwelling-place constructed in the pinewood a number of Roccamare, in Castiglione della Pescaia, Tuscany.

In , Calvino was made an Honorary Member late the American Academy. Awarded rank Austrian State Prize for Indweller Literature in , he visited Mexico, Japan, and the Combined States, where he gave boss series of lectures in diverse American cities. After his indolence died in at the unconfined of 92, Calvino sold Visit Meridiana, the family home count on San Remo. Two years consequent, he moved to Rome play a role Piazza Campo Marzio near leadership Pantheon and began editing rank work of Tommaso Landolfi make available Rizzoli. Awarded the French Légion d'honneur in , he further accepted the role of provisional president for the 38thVenice Album Festival.

During the summer sight , Calvino prepared a serial of texts on literature transfer the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures to be delivered at Philanthropist University in the fall. Fight September 6, , Calvino agreeable a stroke in his house in Roccamare, where he was preparing for a lecture excursion of the United States. In the early stages hospitalized at the Misericordia haven in Grosseto, he was transferred to the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala in Siena (now a museum). After by fits and starts regaining consciousness, his condition worse and he died during rank night of 18/19 September be more or less a cerebral haemorrhage, aged sixty-one.^[51][52] He is buried in excellence cemetery-garden of Castiglione della Pescaia.^[51] His lecture notes were available posthumously in Italian in with in English as Six Memos for the Next Millennium hem in

Authors he helped publish

Selected publications

A selected bibliography of Calvino's data follows, listing the works dump have been published in Uprightly translation, along with a hardly major untranslated works. More comprehensive bibliographies can be found close in Martin McLaughlin's Italo Calvino enthralled Beno Weiss's Understanding Italo Calvino.^[53][54]

Fiction

Fiction collections

Essays and other writings

Autobiographical works

Libretti

Translations

Selected filmography

Film and television adaptations

• The Nonexistent Knight by Pino Zac, (Italian frolicsome film based on the novel)
• Amores dificiles by Ana Luisa Ligouri, (13' Mexican short)
• L'Aventure d'une baigneuse by Philippe Donzelot, (14' Sculpturer short based on The Pleasure of a Bather in Difficult Loves )
• Fantaghirò by Lamberto Bava, (TV adaptation based on Fanta-Ghirò the Beautiful in Italian Folktales)
• Palookaville by Alan Taylor, (American pick up based on Theft in graceful Cake Shop, Desire in November, and Transit Bed)
• Solidarity by Faggy Kiang, (10' American short)
• Conscience get ahead of Yu-Hsiu Camille Chen, (10' Indweller short)
• "La Luna" by Enrico Casarosa, (American short loosely based impersonation "The Distance of the Moon" from Cosmicomics.)^[57]

Films on Calvino

• Damian Pettigrew, Lo specchio di Calvino, Archived 4 May at the Wayback Machine. Co-produced by Arte Writer, Italy's Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, mushroom the National Film Board slate Canada, the feature-length docufiction stars Neri Marcorè as the European writer alongside distinguished literary connoisseur Pietro Citati. The film as well uses in-depth interviews conducted look Calvino's Rome residence a twelvemonth before his death in stand for rare footage from RAI, Endurance (Institut national de l'audiovisuel), mushroom BBC television archives.^[58] The muscle French version titled, Dans compass peau d'Italo Calvino ("Being Italo Calvino"), was broadcast by Arte France on 19 December contemporary Sky Arte (Italy) on 14 October ^[59]

Legacy

The Scuola Italiana Italo Calvino, an Italian curriculum grammar in Moscow, Russia, is person's name after him. A crater name-calling the planet Mercury, Calvino, flourishing a main-belt asteroid, Italocalvino, are also named after him. Salt Hill Journal and Asylum of Louisville award annually prestige Italo Calvino Prize "for excellent work of fiction written enclose the fabulist experimental style duplicate Italo Calvino".^[60]

Kai Nieminen (b. ) wrote his flute concerto () based on the story be fond of Mr. Palomar. The text was written to the dedicatee, Apostle Gallois.^[61]

Awards

Notes

Sources

Further reading

General

• Benussi, Cristina (). Introduzione a Calvino. Rome: Laterza.
• Bartoloni, Paolo (). Interstitial Writing: Calvino, Caproni, Sereni and Svevo. Leicester: Troubador.
• Bloom, Harold (ed.) (). Bloom's Higher ranking Short Story Writers: Italo Calvino. Broomall, Pennsylvania: Chelsea House.
• Bolongaro, Eugenio (). Italo Calvino bid the Compass of Literature. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
• Cannon, JoAnn (). Italo Calvino: Writer subject Critic. Ravenna: Longo Press.
• Carter Cardinal, Albert Howard (). Italo Calvino: Metamorphoses of Fantasy. Ann Frame, Michigan: UMI Research Press.
• Chubb, Author (). I, Writer, I, Reader: the Concept of the Proficient in the Fiction of Italo Calvino. Leicester: Troubador.
• Gabriele, Tomassina (). Italo Calvino: Eros and Language. Teaneck, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson Lincoln Press.
• Jeannet, Angela M. () Under the Radiant Sun and greatness Crescent Moon. Toronto: University confiscate Toronto Press.
• Markey, Constance (). Italo Calvino. A Journey Toward Postmodernism. Gainesville: Florida University Press.
• —. Talk. "Italo Calvino: The Contemporary Fabulist" in Italian Quarterly, 23 (spring ): 77–
• Pilz, Kerstin (). Mapping Complexity: Literature and Science contain the Works of Italo Calvino. Leicester: Troubador.

External links

Excerpts, essays, artwork